Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: The Pakistanis famously joke that their all-powerful army has never won a war and never lost an election!
They are seeing it repeat once again.
And in the Adiala jail in Rawalpindi, the headquarters of the Pakistan Army, the man the boots love to hate is laughing aloud!
For, even after the nearly bankrupt country’s benchmark stock index fell 2.8 percent on Monday—it had already dropped 1.8 percent last Friday—and the politically unstable country’s business and industry are fleeing to Dubai and other places—the squabbling politicians failed to come to terms with the political googly their bete noire Imran Ahmed Khan Niazi threw at them.
So, when these Army-selected parties’ coalition talks hit a speed bump over who would be the next Prime Minister, the generals have found an opening to meddle in power sweepstakes. Even after the February 8 polling, the army continued to withhold the declaration of results in some constituencies until it produced the desired results!
The media reported on Tuesday that Pakistan’s two main family-owned political outfits hit a snag in their talks to form a new government, as they can’t agree on who would become their PM if they stitch together a rag-tag coalition designed to thwart jailed ex-premier Imran Khan.
The Sharif and Bhutto clans both want their candidates to take the top job. Sherry Rehman, a senior leader of Bilawal Bhutto Zardari’s Pakistan Peoples’ Party (PPP), said the outfit will form committees to “negotiate with other political parties.”
It could, therefore, take days, or even weeks, for a government to be formed. On Monday, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) President Shehbaz Sharif said on X, formerly Twitter, that the two families had “agreed in principle to save the country from political instability.”
The Sharifs and Bhuttos have been negotiating to cobble together a government after Imran Khan’s candidates, running as independents, defied the odds by taking the most seats in the election—over 100 in a National Assembly of 266 electable seats—but fell short of an outright majority of 134. Bhutto Zardari’s PPP had two meetings with three-time PM Nawaz Sharif’s PML-N over the weekend. With PML (N) poaching 10 independent winners from Imran’s flock, its strength has gone up to 80, making it press ahead of the PPP’s 54.
Local media reported that PML-N wants either Nawaz or his brother, Shehbaz, to lead the government. The PPP, which came third in the vote, would like Bhutto Zardari, 35, the son of assassinated former premier Benazir Bhutto, to be the PM, saying he would be a fresh face in a country where over 60 percent of the population is under 30.
Imran’s one-man outfit—the nearly disbanded Pakistan Tehreek-e-Ittihad (PTI)– has, of course, declared that despite emerging as the single largest “party”, it would not join any political coalition and sit in the Opposition.
Any coalition between the parties would thwart Khan’s candidates, whose strong showing highlighted the former cricket star’s enduring popularity and voters’ disillusionment with the status quo in Pakistan’s family-owned, army-supported political establishment, represented by the Sharif and Bhutto parties. Khan’s party has alleged large-scale vote-rigging in the election, challenged them in courts, and took out protest marches across the country.
For investors, any delay in forming a government would lead to further uncertainty for an economy facing challenges on several fronts. Inflation is running at over 28 percent, the fastest pace in Asia, making it difficult for people to make ends meet. A nine-month bailout program with the International Monetary Fund, Pakistan’s 23rd since independence in 1947, expires in March, suggesting any new leader will have to negotiate a new deal.